Ein Framework als Grundlage der Ausgestaltung von Quality-Gate-Referenzprozessen für die Software-Entwicklung

A considerable number of software projects still exceed time and budget or completely fail, because the qualitative situation of these projects is not visible to the management. Consequently, the management is not able to take actions in time. The problem can be resolved by monitoring the quality of project results and by steering a project at certain major points (so-called Quality Gates). Then each project has to pass these Quality Gates. At each Quality Gate the management makes a decision whether a project may proceed or not. If necessary, the management can take actions at those Quality Gates. In order to determine the situation of a project, the project’s results have to be checked against predefined criteria. Quality Gates are often used in certain domains, e.g. in car development or in serial production of industrial goods. In the domain of software development Quality Gates are used cumulatively. Unfortunately, a theoretical foundation for Quality Gates is currently missing in the domain of software development. Special structures, activities, roles, documents and support tools are required in order that a company can successfully establish Quality Gates. These subconcepts can be combined to a quality gate reference process. A company has to design a quality gate reference process in order to apply it to the company’s projects. The exact design of the quality gate reference process depends on a company’s needs. Since designing an appropriate quality gate reference process is not an easy task, the process management of a company needs a framework supporting the process of designing. This framework is the central result of this thesis. Unfortunately, the quality gate concept is often equated with other concepts. At the same time a remarkable number of synonym concepts exist. Thus, the framework has to provide a consistent terminology and has to define the scope of the quality gate concept. To achieve this aim, a study of the available literature was conducted. Furthermore, an empirical survey was conducted. The empirical survey provides more results as well as an overview of current problems. The results were used to identify the mandatory subconcepts of quality gate reference processes. These subconcepts can be subdivided into five packages: structural, criteria, review, steering and tailoring concepts. When designing a quality gate reference process, a process management has to choose one of the following two strategies: Quality Gates as a consistent quality guideline or Quality Gates as a flexible quality strategy. The selection of the strategy strongly influences the design of each subconcept. A company’s process management can use the framework to design an appropriate quality gate reference process. The process of designing has to take in account the situation of the company: • The company does not possess a quality gate reference process. • The company already possesses a quality gate reference process with shortcomings. • The company wants to optimize its quality gate reference process. Each of these situations requires different actions to be taken: either a quality gate reference process has to be designed from scratch or the available quality gate reference process has to be judged through assessment profiles or the quality gate reference process can be optimized by applying experience cycles and using software tools. Three case studies show the power of the framework. Two case studies show the application of the framework in students’ software projects. The first case study analyzes the improvement of a quality gate reference process through assessment profiles and by introducing software tools. As a result the time effort of the gate review could be reduced to roughly 28%. Moreover, some criteria and the ability to tailor the quality gate reference process to different project situations were improved through the application of an experience cycle. The second case study deals with a quality gate reference process being designed from scratch. This case study analyzes the effects of different approaches to obtain suitable criteria. The last case study shows the power of the framework’s tailoring concepts. The framework uses a tailoring concept witch rests upon the fuzzy concept. This tailoring concept can easily be used to tailor the quality gates reference process within the V-Model XT of the German federal administration. Schlagwörter: Quality Gates, Qualitätsmanagement, Softwareprozess-Verbesserung